Patience pays as Allan McNish lands world crown

JIM McGILL

Scot Allan McNish admitted taking the chequered flag in Shanghai to clinch the first world title of his life was the most emotional moment in his 30-year racing career.

The 43-year-old from Dumfries is Scotland’s first motorsport world champion since Colin McRae lifted the world rally title in 1995, and the significance of his latest achievement was huge for McNish.

“Colin was – is – an icon in world rallying, and to bring another world championship to Scotland, our wee nation, is a massive achievement,” the newly-crowned winner of the FIA World Endurance Championship said in China yesterday.

“We came here with a very clear job to do and did what we had to do,” added McNish, who was partnered by Dane Tom Kristensen and Frenchman Loïc Duval in the Six Hours of Shanghai.

“We were totally risk-averse today, just to gain the position we needed to put it in the bag. It’s a season’s effort and I am very proud of what we did, very pleased.”

McNish and his team-mates had already claimed three victories – including the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, and three second places in the opening six races – and started the penultimate round with a virtually insurmountable 40-point lead.

The Scot – knowing just a fourth-place would seal the title – started the race in his Audi R18 e-tron quattro hybrid from fourth on the 28-car grid at the 3.39-mile F1 Chinese Grand Prix circuit. McNish quickly realised, however, that his car was fitted with the wrong compound of Michelin tyres for the opening 93-minute stint, yet he managed to retain his fourth position in the 28-car field.

With his team-mates handling the next two stints, it was left to McNish, with his Hunting MacInnes tartan band round his race helmet, to bring the car home over the final 75 minutes, finishing third to seal the title.

“I’ve been waiting to win a world championship since 1985. I’ve had three cracks at a world title: in karting I finished third at Le Mans, behind Michael Schumacher – that hurt because it was very close, but no cigar. But then in Formula One with Toyota, there wasn’t really an opportunity: so it’s third time lucky.

“It’s great to finish on the podium and clinch the title, and, sure, it would have been nice to have won, but dropping 40 seconds in the opening stint with the tyre glitch cost us the win.

“But I’m massively proud of what we have accomplished this year. We came out the blocks fighting in the opening race at Silverstone, and went on to also win at Le Mans and in Texas.

“We had a terrific run at the Circuit of the Americas, where we got that last win, and I think that was a big turning point for us this season.

“It was that important result which allowed us to come here today and drive a conservative race, but I’m out to finish the season off in style in Bahrain at the end of the month.

“Crossing the line was very emotional. It’s the cherry on the top of the career cake.”

In addition to his three Le Mans wins and new world title, McNish, widely acknowledged as the world’s greatest sportscar racer in recent years, also won the North American-based ALMS sportscar endurance title with Audi in 2000, 2006 & 2007.

His first single-seater title was the 1988 Formula Vauxhall Lotus Championship, following multiple Scottish and British kart championship titles.

The Shanghai race was won in dramatic style by McNish’s Audi team-mates, Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler.

The Toyota of Nicolas Lapierre and Alex Wurz had looked on course to win, leading going into the last 33 minutes of the race.

But the former Austrian F1 racer was forced into a short fuel-only pitstop, and though he exited ahead of Treluyer, the Frenchman squeezed past two laps later. The Audi, on fresher tyres, gradually pulled away and cruised to a 16-second win.

In the GTE A class, two other Scots finished on the podium. Having finished 20th overall, Oban-born Jamie Campbell-Walter, and Kirkcaldy’s Jonny Adam, brought their Aston Martin home third in class, 25 laps behind the LMP1 race-winning Audi.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.